Clockwork
by Novoux
Summary: Like clockwork, Izaya can feel the shuddering throb of his heartbeat fluttering without a pace and only seeming to get faster and faster and blood starts blocking his veins because he can't breathe. This hasn't happened before. Never. Shizaya.


Clockwork

It's not as tangible Izaya wants to believe it is. The pure notion of having to stop in the middle of what he's doing—just reading emails for business—and all too quietly it sneaks up on him. And in the third sentence of some inquiry about finding a mole working for another company, his heart stops.

Like clockwork, he stops mid-sentence and feels as if he's a movie put on pause, because he can't seem to move. Seconds tick by on the clock of his computer screen but his eyes aren't reading and his brain isn't computing anymore. System failure sends a shudder down his aching spine and he hunches forward, mouthing for air that has successfully evaded his lungs. The room's spinning and melting into itself in a grotesque picture that is too vivid for his eyes and he feels the first of many waves of nausea slam full force into him.

Akin to a vending machine hitting him full speed the wind suddenly gets knocked out of him, forcing a series of violent coughs tearing from his throat and his eyes sting in tandem to the increasing pace of his heart struggling to pump blood throughout his body. Lungs screaming now he keeps choking much to his frustration and grasping forward while forcing himself to breathe—he can't move. His lungs are collapsing on themselves and panic starts to bubble in his brain uncontrollably when his oxygen intake is cut drastically short. He can feel the shuddering throb of his heartbeat fluttering without a pace and only seeming to get faster and faster and blood starts blocking his veins because he can't _breathe._

This hasn't happened before. Never. So why he's suddenly gasping for air as his heart is literally about to beat out of his chest (or possibly impale itself on a rib or two) his throat starts closing like a choke hold from Shizu-chan's fingers grasping and grabbing around his throat, pressing and clawing digging into his larynx and squeezing so tightly his spine feels like it's about to snap under the pressure. He's not sure what's going on and doesn't have the capability of thinking about much of anything considering his vision's blurring and his brain is filling with wild, subconscious-fueled thoughts of self-preservation and he gasps, sucking in air that just won't fill his lungs and blocked by the constricting of his throat.

Something pitiful struggles its way out of his throat and coughed up, sounding like the noise of a dying small animal which he isn't preoccupied with as he raises a shaking hand to his throat, panting and coughing and gaping like a fish out of water and—he's going to die—the thought occurs to him even when he knows he's not typically afraid of death says the rational part of his mind but his thoughts have been taken over by his subconscious repeating warnings in his brain, thoughts resounding and shouting, belting out that he's going to die and he can't breathe—_make it stop_—

His entire body erupts into shivering; panicked thoughts taking over and draining all reason he has to leave him filled to the brim with hollow mind-numbing panic building upon itself and he's still choking, face turning dark red like his eyes from not being able to suck in a breath as his chest continues to seize with his heart pounding like an overdose without the buzzing in his head, because he doesn't go for mind-altering substances when his lifestyle revolves around actually using a brain. An ugly sound breaks from his throat in a strangled cry, pleading for air as his face burns into a darker shade of red closer to the markings of a bruise forming. He sputters, coughing harshly as his entire body trembles (his arms are shaking in spasms like a drug abuser's twitching limbs) and it's like he fights off an invisible force, choking him and holding him to his desk where his head slams into his keyboard with a resounding brutal clack. Wheezing, Izaya tries to focus his eyes on his computer screen but everything's becoming a blurred mess of slow-spinning color wheels and black spots dripping into his vision. Dry nausea creeps up his throat and his tongue can't even swallow it back down so it resides at the back of his mouth, waiting for a quick breath to expel any contents of his stomach.

This hasn't happened before. It's a realization that doesn't contribute to the way he collapses out of his chair and slides to the floor in a heaping mess of noises and the crashing of his keyboard tumbling down with him. Keys spring off and bounce over his head when they hit the ground, colliding simultaneously with his head as his keyboard scratches the ground and clatters. Izaya's preoccupied—all thoughts on trying to catch air in his quickly fading vision and the air that seizes his throat and evades him. His entire body's convulsing, twitching and flailing and while his brain's short-circuiting he feels like he's losing his mind when he can no longer control himself. Control is his main asset and as it's breaking down it's like breaking down every part of him that's fine-tuned to be what he wants it to be. Screaming agony cracking and thudding in his head as his heart pounds a little less and he knows he's going to die when there's no air left and he's losing everything. As much as he wants to say otherwise, the entire ordeal has gone from being nerve-wracking anxiety to mind-numbing confusion and adrenaline that spikes fear in his subconscious which only adds to the terror he's being presented with on such a (human) weak level of discipline over himself.

It occurs to him somehow in the form of adrenaline and instinctual reaction that his fingers (trembling and weak) get to one of the phones he carries in his pocket and the click of a phone number being dialed is anything but relieving. Instead he gasps like a fish out of water and the last of his vision's starting to fade with short bursts of breaths which make his chest spasm which never helps the painful squeezing fullness of his chest clenching and seizing his heart to the point it'll burst. His eyes are burning with unshed responses to the reaction his body's going through and his ears ring with the groundbreaking shatter of his eardrums bursting seemingly on their own. In the sharp ringing that echoes in his head and makes him groan in a tortured manner he never hears the dial tone of the call connecting.

A click. "Hello?" At any other time the voice on the other end, filtering through carelessly, would make Izaya halt when he's just realizing that he's accidentally called Shizu-chan instead of Shinra. Now is the moment he'd be berating himself silently for making such a callous mistake but when the last of his vision fades he's deciding that now's not the best time. He has to hope (somehow, with that idiot there's no real clear point of trying to do anything beyond the capabilities of his simple motor functions such as being an idiot) that Shizuo can actually rub his one braincell together and put two and two together when he tries to speak.

"Sh-Sh-Shizu-ch-chan," Izaya pants pitifully in a way that makes him hate how vulnerable he sounds. But the words he needs to say stick dryly in his throat and he coughs, triggering more choking and one shaking hand clutches his throat as if it'll pry off the hand strangling him to the brink of unconsciousness. Without air his brain's shutting down and his heart's failing too and he's desperate now after being driven by a rush of his subconscious attempting to take over and keep him alive.

"What? How did you get this number, shitty flea?" Shizuo's anger penetrates Izaya's ringing headache and clangs loudly as it bounces around in his jumbled, panicked thoughts that keep coming at high speeds. His stomach churns angrily and nausea bubbles up again, threatening to overwhelm him as it burns his eyes and nose and he's not sure if his eyes are already closed when he gags and screws his eyes shut. Preparing for the inevitable. And when he hasn't answered Shizuo, the protozoic amoeba decides to bother continuing the one-sided conversation. "Yo? Flea? What the hell are you playing now?" Seconds blur into minutes and Izaya's losing the last moments of consciousness all to the one bleach-blond idiot that's going to be responsible for his death.

"I'm hanging up." Shizuo's bored and irritated voice is like a slap to the face and Izaya's stupidly crazy enough (he's losing his mind anyway, so might as well) to try and call for Shizuo again with his cracked throat and barely contained nausea. It doesn't go well when one minute Izaya's trying to call Shizuo's name to keep him on the line and the next he's rolling over onto his elbow that barely support him to vomit on the floor until he dry heaves the saliva dripping from his mouth.

Acid stains his sinuses and mouth with a sharp contrast to the stabbing pain throughout his convulsing limbs. From his nose he can barely try to breathe anymore with the coarse rubbing of raw skin peeled away by vomit and disgustingly lingering in taste on his tongue and clinging to his teeth. Unsurprisingly one of his dry heaves brings more up from his churning stomach and it's irony considering how badly he's shaking and cannot breathe at all as more bile slides up his esophagus and burns trails out of his nose and mouth to stain his floor.

From the other line Izaya can't hear what Shizuo's saying over the sound of his retching until he collapses a safe distance away from the acidic mess and is hyperventilating when he does. "Izaya, hey, flea, stay on the line. Keep talking to me. I'll be right there." Most of him wonders whether or not this is another hallucination but it's hard to keep thinking when his organs are failing like the way the floor melts and becomes a mass of black.

Shizuo's voice is shouting through the receiver, falling on deafened ears with the last of Izaya's consciousness. The churning anxiety of his voice is choppy and frazzled and as effective as screaming underwater—that's what he really is. And Izaya's going down, down, down because the only thing he can get is worse at this point and this deep; his chest is collapsing and filling with salt water that chokes and burns while it leaks in small drops from the corners of his stinging eyes.

Lips tingling, eyes burning—heart bursting lungs collapsing—his head drops, and a single sigh escapes his lips as the world fades away for Izaya.

Beside his head Shizuo's voice fades and the click of his fingers dropping on his cellphone tells of dropping the call.

Like clockwork.

* * *

><p>The clock starts ticking.<p>

Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of rushing, pushing, running, and taking the train when it's crowded with people to get to Shinjuku. Twenty minutes that feel like hours when there are too many people and there isn't enough time to know why he's doing what he's doing. Or getting to the flea because his mind tells him not to question it like Tom-san did the minute he got the call.

The first five minutes his phone's up to his ear, and he's talking quickly and he doesn't care when people start to stare. Izaya's not responding when he starts a string of insults from old ingrained ones to the fresh ripped off from the top of his head and possibly covered in too many thoughts that stick around and pertain to the flea. He can hear coughing and panting from the other side of the phone. It's wet and sticky the way the hoarse sounds filter through and catch in his ears and mock a death rattle in his ears. Tom-san is beside him and reading Shizuo's expressions when he answers with one single expression the moment after the first series of coughs. _Go,_ he says, and for some reason Shizuo doesn't hesitate. The sound of Izaya gasping rumbles in between his ears and his heart twists in a strangely painful way.

The moment after the call drops the clock starts ticking. It's not even five minutes when the dull tones start echoing. It clicks with a dull thud and a strangled choking sound and the line falls dead.

In ten minutes Shizuo's rounding the corner to the train station because it's faster this way than it is by foot. He's been jogging, talking to himself and in his head focused solely on trying to make sure the call's not hung up and he keeps trying to keep the damn flea on the line but the call never connects. Each time the voice mail answers he gets more and more tempted to crush his phone but settles for the train doors that nearly close on him. They don't get the chance and several crunches of metal later Shizuo's inside the train and people are staring as they back away. The monster of Ikebukuro has just boarded and they're all thinking he's going to attack them like a rabid dog. Let them think what they want, because he knows he can't make it change. They're not the ones who are rapidly tapping their foot and trying to redial the stupid flea when the call's dropped already so many times. If there's a limit on patience he's probably reached it by now.

Fifteen minutes. The whole train ride with its numerous stops makes everything seem longer and drawn out until Shizuo's grinding his teeth with tremendous force. Even with all this extra time he's running purely on adrenaline, not even thinking of what he's doing but his phone isn't by his ear anymore. Blood rushes through him, pulsating with each beat of his heart accentuated by the low thumping that echoes to this fingertips. He's given up on trying to reach the damn louse and his anger is at a rolling boil beneath his skin. People stare and he won't give them the time of day. His mind's occupied with one thing and that's all he cares about. Replays of Izaya's coughing gasps resound and bounce through his head with hissing warnings as they tease him for how slow he is and Izaya's already dying if not dead—

The train hisses to a stop at sixteen minutes along. Clock's ticking in his ears; wanting, waiting for the next move. A countdown that doesn't say when it's going to end or if it's ended already. Next thing he knows _Shinjuku _is being announced and lights up the screen above the door and Shizuo's the first one out. He knows this route like the back of Izaya's head and he takes off, like he's running after the stupid flea when really, in a way he kind of is. But he doesn't think about it, or wanting to kill Izaya when he's focused on the task at hand. Street lights start going by quickly the moment he leaves the station, pushing past more people than he's normally had to. Everyone is in the way, can't they just _move_?

Another corner rounded. He's almost there. Eighteen minutes along with phone grasped tightly in his fingers close to its breaking point. His teeth grind with each step he takes and the sound is akin to metal on metal in a gritty, screeching manner that serves to annoy him even further. This is what he gets, he thinks bitterly, when he glances at his phone for the eighteenth time in the last ten seconds. For some unknown reason he's running toward his archenemy's apartment which isn't the usual office and Izaya doesn't even know Shizuo knows where he lives. It's a one-up type thing that came up during a chase's end and not-so-secretly watching Izaya walk home with a limp of a broken ankle and his wrist dangling at his side, useless from a vending machine slamming into him. Izaya never needed to know that Shizuo knows, so he's kept secrets too. In a way it's sort of demeaning that he's lumping himself—he would _never—_with the damn flea and at the same time he know he's better than that.

_Finally—_Twenty minutes. And he's up the steps and slamming the door open (splintering the many locks behind the door) and rushing in. Adrenaline's still fighting and kicking and screaming to keep him moving and when he looks, it drops. The clock freezes time when its hands stop trembling and curl into fists. Shizuo thinks his heart stops the way it drops into his stomach and melts into the floor.

For a moment, no one breathes.

He's stopped, adrenaline drained in an instant and staring at the odd sight of Izaya, lying on the floor and face-down with his cellphone underneath his fingers. Bits and pieces start coming to Shizuo. He forces himself to move and then alarms start going off in his head when he starts moving and the next thing he knows he's on autopilot, over Izaya on his knees and turning him over where his face is fucking blue.

"Oi! Flea, wake up!" Shizuo shakes him roughly, jabbing two fingers against the carotid artery where Izaya's held a knife to on him so many times before it's like clockwork. But Shizuo's rough shaking isn't rhythmic: it's chaos and messy when he keeps talking and jabbering to stifle the sound of _not _fear. "Flea! Izaya!" The putrid stench of vomit makes itself apparent when Shizuo regrets the moment he looks. Something bubbles up and it's a question if the flea's been poisoned.

"Hey, listen to me." Shizuo's voice is frantic because he can't be calm like this. "Izaya, wake up! Damn it, wake up already you shitty flea!" The pulse underneath his fingers hammers on, going far too fast for Izaya to be unconscious. Maybe he's in shock at this rate and it doesn't help much at all that his lips are purple and his face is an ugly shade of blue.

Shizuo's holding Izaya's head up, shaking his shoulders and continuing his barrage of insulting commands to _wake up_. Won't ever admit that the reason isn't because Izaya's an annoying shit and he wants the last laugh. In his strength he manages to make time start moving again as it's not moving fast enough. The hands and arms start moving, weaving and clicking with the seconds passing by.

And then the clock starts ticking again.

Izaya's eyes, dangerous in their crimson warning color shoot open, and all of a sudden he's moving frantically against Shizuo, gasping for air that by the sound of it, doesn't stay down. His mouth his hanging in a silent scream given sound with the panting that comes of it and his body trembles and twitches in spasmatic motion. For the life of him Shizuo can't figure out what's wrong now and he tries to call Izaya's attention back to the present day.

"Hey, Izaya, what's wrong with you?" Shizuo's shaking him (not as roughly but it still hurts) and Izaya struggles to wriggle out of the brute's grasp while his eyes remain unfocused and the hoarse pants keep coming. "Oi, flea, look at me!" Shizuo tries to hold Izaya's jaw and look at him when he realizes those eyes are entirely unfocused; unseeing.

He's never dealt with this before. It's obvious the way he keeps shaking Izaya and it only worsens the flea's scratching wheezes and he can't figure out what's wrong and why Izaya tries to push him off. It's giving him a headache, dealing with this and it's even more when the flea's involved and he won't _breathe_, the little shit.

Izaya's heart pounds like a hummingbird's and it's frustrating that he can't suck in air and he thinks he's dead at this point and caught between the final throes of death and purgatory. Somehow he doesn't notice it's Shizuo who's clutching him too tightly and he can't breathe so he starts clawing and scratching so whatever it is will let him go. He's choking and breaths keep skipping and short but the panic in his mind isn't as tangible as he wants to believe it is when it grips him and holds him tightly in a death grip. Fear races through the sides of his brain and digs its canines deep into the flesh, pooling in like venom and wriggling like a snake that won't let go no matter how hard he tries to push himself away. Arms flailing wildly Izaya's close to the brink of insanity (or so he believes) within the dazed, terrifying feeling of losing his mind to whatever darkness is behind his eyes when he blinks. It shouldn't be this way: he's the one who is supposed to be controlling fear, not letting it control him. (He can't stop the way his heart pounds and skips erratically or the rush of blood pounding in his ears and deafening in the roar of tidal waves crashing into him and shaking him to the core.)

"Izaya—!" Shizuo's calling and it drowns in the rush. Izaya's seizing with a vengeance as he loses more and more to the beast inside his head that's taken ahold of him and refusing to let go. His eyes don't focus when they're everywhere but _somewhere _and the shaking that's disjointed and not his own only serves to aggravate the stinging pain in his head trailing down his cheeks. All the while his head is screaming too loudly and nothing's making sense but there's the instinct to run and hide. Pure, primal, and illogical desire to stay away and wait out whatever it is that's bothering him. Nothing's making sense anymore. The clock is ticking and time is running out and he needs to—

The moment the shaking stops that isn't his own something's pressing against his lips and holding his head in place. He's stunned momentarily, unable to keep breathing erratically and eventually has to rely on the breath being forced into his lungs.

He realizes it when the pressure pulls away and then air is forced into his mouth. There are lips on his, moving gently as a distraction but not enough to be romantic. In an intimate manner Izaya's starting to come to focus when the lips on his are keeping him grounded and his thoughts become background noise. He stares ahead, straight at only one head of bleach-blond hair and the inhuman strength holding his head up. Heart still hammering against his ribs he tries to gasp but when he does he's met with air, blowing softly and swallowing any attempts of the strenuous choking Izaya makes. The grip on the back of his head starts to slacken even though the tremors seizing his muscles start to leave. And he's nearly boneless as his body starts to slump back into the force keeping him upright.

A voice is in his ear, shushing him when an arm wraps around him. Lips have pulled away from his and are now against his ear. His face, strangely enough, is pressed into a shoulder with little less than a nudge from the back of his head. Thoughts in his head are still there, but they're not screaming at so much of a volume now. When he trembles, there are fingers moving down his spine as if to calm the way Izaya's losing control. Izaya won't ever admit, but it's working as if the heartbeat pressing against his cheek is a calming reminder of the real world.

It's the strangest thing, he realizes, seeing Shizuo wrapping around him as if he's protecting Izaya from another bout of panicked hysteria. His body rocks without his control and he's completely useless lying in the arms of his enemy and unable to say much of anything because his mouth won't move. And the way his lips are still buzzing from the unexpected feel of Shizuo's doesn't contribute to any solution his mind isn't thinking of. Right now he's blank, head throbbing in tandem with his heart rate slowing with panic seeping from his veins and twisting out of the vines roped in with his muscles and slipping out of bone. The only thing he can feel is Shizuo's lips against his ear, murmuring words his brain doesn't hold on to for processing after he hears them. Fingers rub circles over his shirt into the tense muscles of his back, moving downward in patterns and rising back up.

And he breathes. Shakily, frail and unlike himself, he keeps breathing. The frenzied thoughts slowly fade and he starts to see reason and try to analyze what's just happened to what's happening, Shizuo—he's saying something but it doesn't come through—doesn't let go, even when Izaya tries to move and manages to speak instead.

"Sh-Shizu...chan," his tongue feels like lead. "What are you...doing...?" He tries to pull himself together and nothing coming out right which is frustrating in itself. He hates how weak he feels and is, right in front of the monstrous protozoan.

"Keeping you alive, idiot flea." the brute replies, and Izaya feels the tension that suddenly pulls Shizuo's body tight, like he's coiling for an attack. But then Izaya doesn't speak for several moments and the tension fades back into the embrace he's been sucked into.

"No...hospitals." Izaya murmurs, eyes drooping unintentionally as drowsiness starts to creep in with a numbing lull. Shizuo's almost rocking him in a way, possibly moving unbeknownst to himself in slight motions that make his thoughts dull to a humming buzz of white noise echoing behind his ears. He doesn't understand how or why Shizu-chan, the stupidly idiotic protozoic amoeba is here and holding him like they're not enemies. And disgustingly close like they don't hate each other.

Another reason, he remarks dryly, to hate Shizu-chan.

"Calm down," Shizuo reminds him with a low grumble in his voice, dropping deeper when he lowers the volume of his words to accommodate just how low Izaya feels. He's sinking through the floor with eyes downcast and his brain offline coming down from the panic that's warped him into this mess. He can't recall what he was doing before Shizuo came by, and wonders what exactly has happened. All that's coming up, however, is blank and when he tries to dig deeper, his skull starts aching at the back and his chest constricts a little too tightly. "Flea, what happened to you?"

Izaya's miles away. He doesn't hear the question or try to answer when his brain's telling him to get away from Shizuo and the rest of his body is too heavy to move. There are questions digging in his brain such as how Shizuo could have known where his apartment is and the self-depreciating insults of his stupidity filling in the gaping holes. _Why _is Shizuo here is the same question he keeps asking over and over again. It haunts and pulls at every tightly packed recess of his brain that's trying to keep him from having another attack that will leave him more than just breathless. Even now he's even using Shizuo: his heartbeat to be exact, to remember to keep breathing.

Nothing is making sense. It's all jumbled, crumpled up thrown out ideas filled with scratchings of thoughts messy and tangled together which are only more frustrating with their complex simplicity. All the reasoning which is the only thing he can rely on when it's in his head and no one else can see what he's thinking has failed him now when he's slowly becoming more worthlessly empty. Logic and reason mean nothing when they cannot describe the fallacies that exist before him.

"Oi, Izaya," Shizuo's shifting him around and Izaya doesn't remember exactly when his eyes closed or how his breathing evened out. But with each second ticking by Shizuo's voice starts to fade as it rises up from the depths Izaya's being dragged to. Somewhere he remembers the broken keyboard and the keys that struck his face and bounced away and they're oddly reminiscent of the predicament he's in now. Words clogged and pressed to the floor without an outlet to voice and thoughts breaking off and clattering under dark corners he can't reach. His stomach churns with another roll of nausea starting to rise unevenly and grasp the lining of his stomach.

For a moment he thinks the worst is going to come back with a vengeance when he feels the familiar vertigo start to set in with the dumped out box of carefully cataloged emotions rising from the floor. Shizuo's fingers—one of the last things he feels—are pressing deeper, more insistent and the voice in his ear is nothing but blurry like if he opens his eyes. His heart rattles in his chest against his ribs and skips once or twice and there's the sinking feeling he's not going to win this game. The rules keep changing. Just like his and it's not ironic at all when he realizes that (maybe) he deserves this. What for he'd have to guess and pick through all the things he's done and laugh when it's all over.

Hands are around his neck—whether or not they're real he can't tell anymore—pressing harder, deeper, faster—choking him and the voice tucked in the back of his throat is lodged under pressing fingers. And the trembles start at the base of his spine and ripple like the aftermath of a bomb. It's hot and burning and debris is flying everywhere even though it's just the face he can't breathe and his heart's forgetting to keep pumping. Blood is boiling underneath his skin and the strike of a breaking barrier echoes and clangs in his ears.

He's screaming—at least he thinks so—and the sound is reverberating loudly in his ears while the black waves of disgusting fear rise and come to the peak just before they're about to fall. Shizuo's nowhere to be heard and his eyes won't open and if they are, then he's lost any and all sight the moment the waves come crashing down to pull him down with them. His lungs give the same wheezing apprehension from the air that's being pushed out of him and burn like bile.

The last thing he hears and he knows he does because it's sharp and clear from the one and only Shizu-chan is his name.

"Izay—!" He isn't awake long enough to hear it as time's already up. But somehow he's sure it's there.

Like clockwork.

* * *

><p><em>Series goes in order: Clockwork, Clockwise, Counterclockwise<em>

_Thank you for enjoying._


End file.
